SARAWAK is changing the focus of its Visit Sarawak tourism promotion campaign next year to target long-haul markets of Europe instead of near neighbours.

The aim is to lure longer staying, high spending visitors to achieve its target of 5 million visitor arrivals and a RM8.18 billion tourism receipts, state Tourism Minister Abdul Karim Hamzah.

He told the state legislative assembly today that the destination branding will focus on the major markets of the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia.

Karim said the Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) has, since the beginning of this year, been placing emphasis on Scandinavia and the north European market “considering the product acceptability among the Scandinavians” who he said “have longer average length of stay of seven to 10 days and have more spending power”.

He also said STB will also venture to India “with focus on the southern cities as they have more flight accessibility into Malaysia”.

“This market has shown a continuous steady increase in arrivals over the years.”

The board will be looking into the possibilities of partnerships with local Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia tour operators specialising in India market.

Earlier, the minister said Sarawak had seen visitors from India coming to the state for health tourism.

He said, as of October, Sarawak received 34,100 health visitors generating a total of RM47.6 million in receipts, where most of the visitors came from Indonesia followed by China, the Philippines and then India.

“Health tourism provides lucrative opportunities to the local private hospitals and medical practitioners while also benefiting the tourism and hospitality industry.”

The marketing and promotion campaign, Karim said, will be made via what he described as “digital tourism”.

“Digital advancement has a huge impact on the tourism sector.

“My ministry and its agencies have embarked on digital journey by participating in marketing and promoting tourism through various digital platforms.”

Karim, who told the assembly that Sarawak has made its presence felt across various analogue and digital media, also disclosed that an app, the Sarawak Travel App jointly developed by Sarawak Multimedia Authority and his ministry, will be ready by the end of the year.

That app, he said, allows tourists “to have easy access to authentic contents of Sarawak’s unique selling points of culture, adventure, nature, food and festivals”. – November 11, 2019.